The new Scout vs the old Scout a connundrum

[brad]

With only 1000km you need at least 5000km to bed in the diesels & they will improve right through to 20k-30k

[TheScout]

Thanks for the review Nick - very helpful. Just ordered a new Mk 3 110TDI without any of the option packs. My reasoning is similar to yours - just more stuff to go wrong, and also just more of a distraction from, y'know, driving the damn car.

Totally agree re. the seats though, my issue is the lack of bolstering on the front seats and the cheap as ***** fabric. Will also be looking out for some to retrofit seats I think, but a chip tune is higher up my priority list if I'm honest.

R

[Bob51]

Thanks for the review Nick - very helpful. Just ordered a new Mk 3 110TDI without any of the option packs. My reasoning is similar to yours - just more stuff to go wrong, and also just more of a distraction from, y'know, driving the damn car.

Totally agree re. the seats though, my issue is the lack of bolstering on the front seats and the cheap as ***** fabric. Will also be looking out for some to retrofit seats I think, but a chip tune is higher up my priority list if I'm honest.

R

How long until delivery - is the car in Australia?

[TheScout]

Yep, it's in stock, pick it up later this week


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[woofy]

I think we will find they shifted production of these and bumped lots of Oz Orders down the line to get decent stock in for launch.

[duderduderini]

Hey I have had the car a few weeks now.. have 2000k on the clock. The seats still suck. The car at speed made me queasy which is not good so It will have stiffer suspension put in. The basic stereo can be made to sound better by fading it to back speakers about 2 to three indents from the default centre position. The front speakers are way more sensitive than the rears and it sounds pretty ordinary that way. I think the car needs a sub probably under the front seat. I surmise the rear speakers have a small magnet as they have poorly controlled bass. I will talk to my dealer when I see him to see if you can get the door trims off.. there is some talk that there are airbag sensors in the doors (Briskoda).
I drove the mk2 with a chip and boy what a difference I could not believe the fuel consumption it was liter per 100k's less than standard
and it pulled like a train. I just might get one for the car i have after i figure out suspension upgrades and whether the steering can be tweaked in the software.
Getting seats is an isse to cause my dealer said that because there is an airbag in them its not just a simple matter of getting seats from say a vrs and fitting them the airbags are coded and need to be introduced into HAL (yes a reference to the all seeing all knowing computer from 2001)
The new car does nothing better than the old car at all .. SAVE YOUR Pennies!!!! Chip the mk2 and be happy

[TheScout]

I reckon your earlier post was right - start with fatter roll bars front and rear and see if that resolves the body roll issue. Uprated springs and dampers will probably ruin the ride.

Re the seats - I don't know the dealer etc, but I'd just query whether that's actually right or not. I would have thought the Octavia IIIs would all use the same airbag components. Would be interesting to see a parts list and compare the parts codes. If they're all the same parts, it should be a simple matter of disconnecting the battery, unplugging the cable connector under the seat, and swapping the seats out.

An easier (and possibly more cost-effective) solution would be to get the seats re-foamed and re-upholstered by someone that knows what they're doing. So long as there's no additional foam built into the side of the seat and the stitching is done so that the airbag can deploy (again, a decent upholsterer will know how to do this) you should be fine.

I'm a little nervous about the chip tune voiding the warranty. A lot of ECUs have flash counters built in these days....

[Gerrycan]

Don't trust the fuel consumption figures on chipped vehicles unless confirmed with monitored brimmed refills.
Actually that goes for any car.

[brad]

Hey I have had the car a few weeks now.. have 2000k on the clock. The seats still suck. The car at speed made me queasy which is not good so It will have stiffer suspension put in. The basic stereo can be made to sound better by fading it to back speakers about 2 to three indents from the default centre position. The front speakers are way more sensitive than the rears and it sounds pretty ordinary that way. I think the car needs a sub probably under the front seat. I surmise the rear speakers have a small magnet as they have poorly controlled bass. I will talk to my dealer when I see him to see if you can get the door trims off.. there is some talk that there are airbag sensors in the doors (Briskoda).
I drove the mk2 with a chip and boy what a difference I could not believe the fuel consumption it was liter per 100k's less than standard
and it pulled like a train. I just might get one for the car i have after i figure out suspension upgrades and whether the steering can be tweaked in the software.
Getting seats is an isse to cause my dealer said that because there is an airbag in them its not just a simple matter of getting seats from say a vrs and fitting them the airbags are coded and need to be introduced into HAL (yes a reference to the all seeing all knowing computer from 2001)
The new car does nothing better than the old car at all .. SAVE YOUR Pennies!!!! Chip the mk2 and be happy

Mate, can you start anew para every now & then - really hard to read as a block of text like that.

If the suspension is making you queasy then it's probably just dampers - do you feel the springs aren't being controlled properly?

The seats won't be that big a deal. The dealer doesn't know & therefore is trying to mitigate the risk of a foul-up by making it out to be harder than it is. (basically, he doesn't want to do it).

Almost all the seats are interchangeable in terms of physical mount points. I haven't looked at the MQB chassis but in the older Mk2 you can fit any other Polo, Fabia, Octavia, Golf, Superb, Passat, Audi seat. There are subtle differences in the 3 pin connector for the airbag and the 2 pin connector for the drivers seat sensor - this is easily fixed with sidecutters, a soldering iron and heatshrink tubing. You also have top consider seat heaters & any electrically driven adjustments the new seat does / doesn't have.

Even if the older platform seats don't fit you can look at current MQB platform offerings from the Golf, etc.

There can be differences in the resistance reading of the airbag. The BCM poles the airbag on start up and if the resistances don't match it throws an error. If this happens then it is possible in many cases to swap the airbags.

I can almost guarantee you that doing the job through the dealer using new parts (where else will he get a VRS seat?) won't give you much change out of $3500.

You are better off finding a set of 2nd hand seats from the forums, ebay or a wreckers, ensure they physically fit and get a motor trimmer to fit them & do the wiring.

Better still, get your current seats re-contoured by a motor trimmer to suit your needs or go aftermarket with Recaro or similar.

[brad]

I'm a little nervous about the chip tune voiding the warranty. A lot of ECUs have flash counters built in these days....

Quality tuning box is the way to go on a diesel. Something like a DTUK unit.


Gerrycan. my TSI has a bluefin. It uses less fuel under like-for-like driving as un-tuned. The onboard readout is spot-on (actually it's usually about 0.1 MORE) than the actual usage. I did tweak mine via VCDS though.